How Medical Affairs can measure Omnichannel engagement with scientific measures rather than commercial ones

Every Medical Affairs team that engages HCPs across channels is eventually asked the same question by its leadership. What is this delivering? The question is fair. Medical Omnichannel programs cost money, involve platforms and consume liaison time. The problem is that the measures offered in answer were mostly designed for other functions, and Medical teams know it. Open rates say little about scientific value. Measures of prescribing cannot be used at all.

This article sets out the measures Medical Affairs teams have agreed on in practice, how they differ from the activity reports most platforms produce, how to connect them to medical objectives, and how to present them so that Medical, Legal and Compliance are comfortable and leadership is convinced. It draws on Medical Affairs engagements in US biopharma and global pharma, and on the Medical Affairs Professional Society's guidance on Omnichannel engagement.

Why do commercial measures fail in Medical Affairs?

Three reasons, and the first is the one that matters most. Measures that describe influence on prescribing are incompatible with the non-promotional nature of scientific exchange under the EFPIA Code, the IFPMA Code of Practice and the national codes built on them. A Medical team measured on share has a compliance problem whatever its intentions.

The second reason is that activity measures reward the wrong behavior. Contact counts, reach and email volume push a Medical function toward frequency, and frequency is the opposite of what HCPs want from Medical. The third is that engagement measures taken from marketing, such as open and click rates, describe interest in a message rather than resolution of a scientific need. An HCP who opened three emails and still has an unanswered question has not been served.

Which measures describe scientific value?

The measures Medical teams accept describe whether an HCP's scientific need was met, how well, and what the company learned. They fall into four groups.

None of these requires prescribing data, and all of them can be reported within a planning cycle. Each describes behavior, of the HCP or of the Medical function, and each is a measure Legal and Compliance can review without concern.

How do these measures differ from the platform's reports?

Most engagement platforms report what they can count. Emails sent and opened, portal sessions, content downloads, liaison interactions logged. These are useful for managing capacity and for finding broken channels. They do not describe scientific value, and a Medical leadership review built on them turns into a conversation about volume.

The distinction is simple to state. Activity measures describe what the Medical function did. Scientific measures describe what the HCP got. A monthly review should spend most of its time on the second group and treat the first as background.

How many measures should a Medical team track?

Three to five at the level of the team, reviewed monthly by the people who can change how the function works. The number is small for the same reason it is small everywhere else. The purpose is a decision, such as resizing medical information for a new volume of questions or changing which requests reach a liaison, and a conversation about fifteen measures becomes a presentation. More can be tracked below that level for capacity management.

How are the measures connected to medical objectives?

Medical Affairs objectives are usually stated in terms of scientific understanding, evidence generation and the quality of scientific exchange. Each measure should be traceable to one of them. Responsiveness and consistency serve the quality of scientific exchange. Usefulness serves scientific understanding. Insight use serves evidence generation and medical strategy. A measure that cannot be traced to a medical objective is probably a measure from another function in disguise.

This connection also answers leadership's question. Medical Omnichannel engagement is delivering when HCP questions are resolved faster and more completely, when HCPs report that the information was useful, when the experience holds together across touch points, and when what Medical learns changes what Medical does. Each of those can be shown against a baseline within two or three quarters.

What does a baseline look like for Medical Affairs?

Before anything changes, the team records how the measures stand today. How long questions take to resolve, how often an HCP has to ask twice, how much insight is captured and how much of it is reviewed. In most companies this baseline is uncomfortable, and that is its value. It gives the Medical Omnichannel program something to be compared against, and it gives leadership a reason to fund the change. A baseline that includes what HCPs say about the current experience, in their own words, is more persuasive than any figure.

How should the measures be reviewed and reported?

Monthly within Medical, with the baseline visible and one question on the table. Is the model serving HCPs better than before, and what needs to change? Quarterly to Medical leadership, together with the insight that reached medical plans, so that by the time investment decisions are made leadership has seen the evidence several times.

Reports that leave Medical should describe scientific value and nothing else. A Medical measurement review that includes prescribing data, even for context, invites the wrong conversation and creates a record nobody wants. Where Medical and Commercial share a platform, the access rules should keep Medical engagement measures inside Medical.

How should Medical Affairs present the measures to leadership?

Briefly, with the baseline beside the current figure, and with one example an executive will remember. A chart showing that HCP questions are resolved in half the time they took a year ago is useful. The same chart next to an HCP's own words about what the faster answer meant for a patient discussion is persuasive. Leadership rarely remembers a percentage, and usually remembers a story that the percentage supports.

The presentation should also show what Medical did with what it learned. Insight that changed an evidence plan, a medical education topic or a medical information response demonstrates that the engagement is a two-way exchange, which is the strongest argument for the program and the clearest distinction from other functions' use of channels. Medical leaders who present insight use alongside responsiveness find the investment conversation moves from whether to how much.

What are the warning signs that measurement has gone wrong?

• The review is about volume. Most of the meeting discusses interactions logged and emails sent, and nobody asks whether HCP questions were resolved.
• Liaisons are ranked. Medical science liaisons are compared on counts, and the long, well-prepared scientific conversation becomes rarer.
• Measures arrived with the platform. The team reports whatever the dashboard shows, and nobody in Medical chose the measures.
• Insight is captured and never used. Field observations are logged, counted and not reviewed, and liaisons stop capturing them.
• A commercial measure appears. Prescribing or share data enters a Medical review as context, and the boundary is weakened by habit rather than by decision.

Where should a Medical Affairs team begin?

Choose three measures from the four groups that Medical leadership, Legal and Compliance all accept, record the baseline, and review them monthly for two quarters before adding anything. Connect each to a medical objective in writing. Keep the platform's activity reports for capacity management and out of the leadership review. Medical teams that have done this report the same result. The question from leadership stops being whether Omnichannel engagement delivers and becomes what Medical should do more of.